Doug Ingle, the Voice of Iron Butterfly, Is Dead at 78

Doug Ingle, the lead singer and organist of Iron Butterfly, the band that turned a purportedly misheard lyric into “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” the 17-minute magnum opus that propelled acid rock into the outer reaches of excess in the late 1960s, died on May 24. He was 78.

His death was confirmed in a social media post by his son Doug Ingle Jr. The post did not say where he died or specify a cause.

Mr. Ingle was the last surviving member of the classic lineup of Iron Butterfly, the pioneering hard rock act he helped found in 1966. The band released its first three albums within a year, starting with “Heavy” in early 1968, and, after a lineup shuffle, cemented its place in rock lore with its second album, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” released that July.

“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” spent 140 weeks on the Billboard album chart, peaking at No. 4, and was said to have sold some 30 million copies worldwide. A radio version of the title song, whittled to under three minutes, made it to No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.

But it was the full-length album version — taking up the entire second side of the LP in all of its messy glory — that became a signature song of the tie-dye era. With its truncheonlike guitar riff and haunting aura that called to mind a rock ’n’ roll “Dies Irae,” the song is considered a progenitor of heavy metal and encapsulated Mr. Ingle’s ambition at the time:

“I want us to become known as leaders of hard rock music,” Mr. Ingle, then 22, said in a 1968 interview with The Globe and Mail newspaper of Canada. “Trend setters and creators, rather than imitators.”

A psychedelic dirge but also a love song, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” captured a 1960s spirit of yin-yang duality — much like the band’s name itself. There have been varying origin stories regarding its mysterious title, with its overtones of Eastern mysticism; the band’s drummer, Ron Bushy, said in a 2020 interview with the magazine It’s Psychedelic Baby that it grew out of an inebriated garble.